Where I Was From: August 2006

Kjersti's off to Seattle

Might I reiterate, this girl's skipping town right about now and I'm going to miss her guts something fierce.

I remember in the sophomore dorm, I lived right down the hall from her for a few months before I met her. Her door was always open and her crazy Amadeus laugh would roll along the hallway to the far end where I was busy thinking about Rivers Cuomo and having my awful outfits loudly mocked by the basketball team's girlfriends (can I just add that they all wore sweatsuits every day? Way to cast the first stone). I was intimidated by Kjersti because she did things like associate with humans and attend indie rock shows, while I was only vaguely aware of the existence of either. But I bit the bullet and got to know her, and she took me to my first indie show in San Francisco, Built to Spill. And introduced me to roughly a third of my friends. And I stopped wearing five layers of mismatched clothes. The rest has been golden.

Kjersti, you are a doll.

Oak Park

We thought the name meant something when the waitress showed up with food before we'd even ordered, but turns out she was dropping it off at the booth next to ours, and did not, in fact, know what we wanted without asking.

"She's no jedi."

Labels: travel

HELLO WISCONSIN

Road trip!

No, we did not take a road trip to Rockford yesterday. Oh no. We decided that we absolutely required to go all the way to Wisconsin. (I'm sure everyone has that mood pretty often.) So, off we went through the mist and rain to the world-famous House on the Rock. I wasn't even aware that this place was real until about a year ago. Until then, I'd been convinced that my memories of it were all a series of complex childhood nightmares. I've got some photos uploaded (more to come) but you really do have to take in the experience for real to understand what profound crawling jeebies the place will instill in your spine. I'm amazed it's not wider known (Neil Gaiman fans at least know it from American Gods), like the Winchester Mystery House. There's the world's biggest carousel, a life-size papier mache whale/squid showdown, collections of dolls, antiquities, and room after room of instruments that play themselves - all worked into a musty subterranean labyrinth with brightly carpeted walls.

Okay, I'm feeling about like Hayley did when she walked into the squid/whale room:

So I'll stop here and just post the link to the rest of my photos (still have more to add to it yet).

As our travel companion Daniel said, the House on the Rock is ground zero for Crazy.

Labels: travel

The um, hostelling life.

First of all, I've got to say I did succeed to a small degree in persuading a few Chicagoans to dance, though I'm suspicious that they agreed to it solely to make me stop whining. In any case, our dancing attracted a sketchy Billy Idol lookalike who was two sheets to the wind and looking to hump some legs, so the moment didn't last. We'd been hanging out in a great
underground bar after seeing some improv in Wrigleyville and weaving through a stampede of Cubs fans. One of the two improv acts was done with Sesame Streetish puppets. Trust me, it was brilliant. Not for kids.

Thursday, I took a stroll through the conservatory and returned to the hostel to meet up with a little
group bound for a free jazz show in Millennium Park under the crazy Gehry bandshell. They didn't mind that I wasn't a real hosteller, and I met some pretty cool folks. Each of us was from a different country (England, Ireland via Hollan, Jordan, Japan, Australia, Italy, and Canada were all represented). I fancy them all creating a temporary Auberge
Espagnol back there at the hostel, and I get a tiny jealous twinge until I remember that I have my
own little room and a kitchen AND an excellent tour guide at my disposal. For free. Hah-cha-cha.

Anyway, the Fred
Anderson trio was stellar, as was the Art Institute (my favorites: Toulouse Lautrec, as
always, and for some reason, every painting they have from 1913 was amazing. In my ignorance, I didn't jot down the artists' names, and I want to call it abstract expressionism but honestly, I just like those angles and bright colors that fade out from them. That is the official term. 1913. Europe. Fadythings.)

This lovely lady is a Buddhist saint of sorts who men more or less worship sexually in order to attain enlightenment. I hadn't heard of such a thing before, either.

Labels: Chicago, travel

Lincoln Park Conservatory

HEY WHO LIKES PLANTS?

The Lincoln Park Conservatory, it would seem, was built in the 1890s, and only then, because unlike our Conservatory of Flowers at home, it doesn't burn down every 20 years. Like so many things in Chicago, it's also admission free.

Touch me, baby.

Okay, rhubarb's real. I owe you five dollars.

That's a grapefruit tree.

I just liked the "smell" sign on this one. Between the "touch" sign and this one, I was determined to find an "eat me," but unfortunately failed to spot it.

Spot the hippo!

Shakespeare sits outside. Quoth Hayley: "I'd recognize his bald pate anywhere."

Nice garters, Willy.

Labels: Chicago, travel

Bad shots of stained glass

All right, here are a few awful shots I managed to snatch whilst arguing with my camera about whether its batteries were dead or not. (the camera eventually won)

Here's part of an homage to printers and publishers. If my batteries had held out, you would see some American HEROES operating an old-school printing press. Steve would demand a poster version. But all we get is this gem of an inscription: "Antagonists of Error."

Close up on this one and you'll see it's made of wire.

I'm including this one because it made Hayley go "Oooooo, faaaaaaerieeees!"

And we'll conclude our tour with something pretty.

Stained glass, everybody.

Labels: Chicago, travel

Photos to be added when/if I feel like it

Lord, it's 90 degrees out there and I am a first class wuss about it.

We went to the Navy Pier today to see the Smith Museum of Stained Glass (accessible by a free trolley full of dopey tourists in shortpants. I gave Hayley my best rendition of "gooble gobble, one of us!" so she'd feel more, *ahem* comfortable being the only local aboard). We learned how stained glass is made AND I BET YOU WISH I WOULD TELL YOU, DON'T YOU?

We also skulked around the main hostel downtown, in case anything interesting was happening. I signed up for a field trip of sorts to a free jazz concert tomorrow. Hopefully they won't demand to see an ISIC card or a room key from the hostel because I'm a MOLE in their midst, and faking that I don't speak English would not work with foreigners around. "You only speak Russian? That's okay, Sergey here will translate."

The Tribune Tower is based on the Rouen Cathedral, so picture, if you will, a skyscraper that's a cathedral. I love that freakin' Tribune Tower. They embedded stones from famous places into the facade (Elsinore, Edinburgh Castle, etc.) and when we looked in the front window where there's a radio station, Jesse Jackson was sitting in there not six feet away from us.

We wandered further and stopped in the middle of a bridge over the river (sorry Christian, didn't note down which one) and I planted one foot on either side of the center seam to take in the view. I think I'm thoroughly sated with the historical/touristic activities of the past week and am ready to settle down and try doing whatever it is that normal people do on vacations. What was that ugly word? Relaxing? It's time for some of that, since I've fairly exhausted a long list of things to stare at and above all, I've had the deep dish pizza. They really do not mess around here. That pizza means BUSINESS. Oh mercy. It's grand.

Labels: Chicago, travel

A trip to the zoo

The zoo is admission-free here. Hot diggity!

Hayley and Leah discuss various monkeys:

Labels: Chicago, travel

Downtown

Here are a few shots from a trip I took downtown the other day to gawk at buildings. I've managed to restrain myself from spending all my time on educational outings, but the friends I made in Wicker Park, fun as they are, were adverse to having their photos taken, so the AV here will remain free of the human image. If I were a tourist in San Francisco, my photos would be quite the opposite.

Another strange thing about the bars here is that they never really close - they just gradually fill up with smoke until it becomes unbearable and you wander out into the early morning light.

These first four are from the Chicago Cultural Center, which was originally the library. The Tiffany dome is either the largest one in the world or the most expensive, or contains the most pieces - I can't remember. In any case, the building is exquisite and the mosaics sparkle like Jessica Rabbit.

This here is the water tower, or rather, some of it. Along with the pumping station next door, it's one of the two buildings to survive the great fire of 1871, or as I've seen it on plaques everywhere, the "conflagration." Say it out loud with me: conflagration. squee.